Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
As we all know, the year 2001 in pro wrestling was not a very good year. One of the reasons was WWE’s biggest rival at the time, World Championship Wrestling, was suffering both creatively and financially. The company as a whole, was on the brink of disaster with rumors of it being put up for sale. With rumblings that a group led by Eric Bischoff and possibly being sold to WWE were making the rounds, perhaps a big pay per view could help save WCW from ruins?
With WCW in dire straights seeing television ratings plummet and attendance figures decreasing at an alarming rate, the company decided to go to their emergency back up plan. They would go overseas to Europe…Germany in particular…to help stop the hemorrhaging of cash. For those not aware, Germany was WCW’s ace in the hole…in case of emergency…break glass type of situation. The WWF/WWE had a very similar type of place they would often go to when things weren’t always clicking in the United States in the form of the United Kingdom.
In the case of WCW, Germany was their “go to” when things weren’t all wine and roses in the States. For whatever reason, WCW was still pretty popular to German fans at the tail end of their existence. One of the main reasons, as was the case with the WWF and Great Britain…was the fact that European audiences were starving for marquee professional wrestling. Sure, there were many smaller independent groups all over Europe, but the “big time” wrestling they saw with WCW on German channels like DSF, helped grow a dedicated audience to WCW programming.
So much so, that WCW headed to Germany a few times and even held a German exclusive pay per view called Millennial Final in November of 2000. Sting was a big star in the United States, but an even greater star in Germany. The German exclusive event was a success for WCW with over 9,000 paid fans in attendance at the Arena Oberhausen. While that attendance figure may seem paltry to many, keep in mind that WCW were doing gates less than that back home in the U.S..
The success of Millennial Final combined with the continued downward spiral of the company back in the States, prompted WCW management to make another planned expedition to Deutschland. This would be another pay per view event that would take place in Western Europe entitled ‘WCW Odyssey.’ It was scheduled to happen in Autumn of 2001. While no known matches were officially booked for Odyssey, the show was planned to be a much bigger deal than the initial Millennial Final pay per view.
Of course, WCW would falter and be sold to WWE in March of 2001 leaving ‘Greed’ to be the last pay per view event for the company. WCW Odyssey would never see the light of day. What it would become, is a lesser known trivia question and the last known concept, pay per view event in WCW history. What would it have consisted of? Would it have been a bigger deal? Who really knows? It is just a small footnote in WCW’s history.